Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners

In the past 30 years, the population of prisoners in the United States has expanded almost 5-fold, correctional facilities are increasingly overcrowded, and more of the country's disadvantaged populations—racial minorities, women, people with mental illness, and people with communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis—are under correctional supervision.

Because prisoners face restrictions on liberty and autonomy, have limited privacy, and often receive inadequate health care, they require specific protections when involved in research, particularly in today's correctional settings. Given these issues, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections commissioned the Institute of Medicine to review the ethical considerations regarding research involving prisoners.

The resulting analysis contained in this book, Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners, emphasizes five broad actions to provide prisoners involved in research with critically important protections:

• expand the definition of "prisoner";

• ensure universally and consistently applied standards of protection;

• shift from a category-based to a risk-benefit approach to research review;

• update the ethical framework to include collaborative responsibility; and

• enhance systematic oversight of research involving prisoners.

• Front Matter
• Summary
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Today's Prisoners: Changing Demographics, Health Issues, and the Current Research Environment
• 3 Federal Regulatory Landscape
• 4 Defining Prisoners and Correctional Settings
• 5 The Ethical Framework for Research Involving Prisoners
• 6 Systems of Oversight, Safeguards, and Protections
• A Data Sources and Methods
• B The National Commission's Deliberations and Findings
• C Report of the SACHRP Subcommittee and Human Subjects Protections
• D Code of Federal Regulations Title 45: Public Welfare Part 46: Protection of Human Subjects
• E Committee, Expert Advisor, Liaison Panel, and Staff Biographies
• Index